“Rhonda, sweetheart, did you really do this?” Dean asked, his eyes also glued to his daughter-in-law.
“Yes,” Rhonda kept her seat, the only one in the room who had, outside Kirby. She nodded and repeated, “Yes. It’s for the best. It’s for my boys.”
“It’s for your boys?” Fin spat, leaning forward.
“Fin, man, take a walk,” Mike repeated.
“Yes,” Rhonda spoke over him. “You told me I should be lookin’ out for you. I’m lookin’ out for you.”
“By taking away my future?” Fin asked.
“By giving you one. Debbie tells me the sale of the land will set you up.” Rhonda threw out her hand. “It’ll set all of us up.”
“I’m already set up, Ma. I got everything I want. I got my future and that future, every day, every fucking day I go out and work this farm, I do it with my father,” Fin shot back, his words nearly guttural and not just with anger but with grief burned a hole straight through Mike’s fucking heart. “That’s the future I want and I wanted it even before he died. Now I want it more because it’s the only thing of him I have left.”
Rhonda blanched and Dean stepped in.
“Rhonda, I wish you’d spoken to me about this.”
Rhonda tore her eyes away from her son and looked to her father-in-law. “Debbie warned me not to. She said you’d try to talk me out of it and I knew that was true. And now, that’s been proved.”
“Go with me now,” Fin ordered, cutting in, his voice now hard, his eyes pinned to his mother. “Right now, get in my truck and go with me to the cemetery so you can actually spit on Dad’s grave rather than doin’ it like this.”
“Fin,” Rhonda whispered, eyes round, face shocked and horrified.
“He’d hate you for doin’ this, Ma. All his life he did nothin’ but love you but if he knew you were doin’ this, he’d hate you. He’d hate everything about you. He wouldn’t even wanna look at you,” Fin clipped, Rees got close and Mike tensed.
She put her hand on his chest, tipped her head back, leaned in and whispered, “Fin, let’s go for a walk.”
Fin lifted a hand and Mike tensed more but he just wrapped it around Rees’s and held it at his chest, his eyes never leaving his mother.
“And you know how I know that?” he asked quietly then answered his own question. “Because not five minutes ago, I sat in this room with my family, with friends, listenin’ to Aunt Dusty sing and No play and doin’ it knowin’ Dad would love to have been here for this. Dad would love this fuckin’ house filled with fuckin’ people he cared about, sharin’ time, doin’ nothin’, killin’ time in a sweet way waitin’ to eat. Doin’ nothin’ but doin’ it together which means it isn’t nothin’. It’s everything. And I’m my father’s son, he made me that way and, you takin’ that away from all of us, right now I hate you.”
Fin’s last three words were so rough they were ragged and Mike pulled in breath at the sound of them but Fin was done. He knew this because Fin dropped Rees’s hand but slid an arm around her shoulders, turning them both and walking out of the living room, through the entryway and right out the front door.
Mike turned back to the room, his eyes going to Dusty who had her head bent, her palms pressed to her forehead, fingers in her hair, visibly rubbed raw by the harshness of her nephew’s words but he didn’t look at her long.
This was because Kirby spoke.
“I can’t believe you,” he whispered and Mike saw he was struggling. He didn’t want to lose it but it was clear he was in a fight he wasn’t going to win and he didn’t. A tear escaped and slid down his cheek as he went on, “I can’t believe you’d do this to Fin, to me, to Aunt Dusty, Gramps, Dad. I can’t believe you.”
“Kirb, honey,” Rhonda started beseechingly, leaning forward and even reaching out a hand to her younger son. “You’re too young to understand but I’m doing the right thing for you and your brother.”
“No, you aren’t.” Kirb shook his head. “I don’t know what house you been livin’ in since forever but if you’ve been livin’ in this house with Dad, Fin and me you’d know you aren’t. You’re doin’ what Aunt Debbie wants you to do. You’re too weak and stupid to see she’s usin’ you. Dad knew what she was like. He even said it. He said it all the time around you. Did you even listen? Do you pay attention to anything? ‘Cause I don’t think you do. I don’t think you ever did. I think you’re the most selfish person I ever met because even before Dad died you just took and took from him and now you’re takin’ from me and Fin and Aunt Dusty and Gramps and all because you’re stupid and weak. Weak and stupid. That’s all you are. And with Dad gone, we gotta put up with it. Since he died, the way you been actin’, I’ve been wonderin’ if he was the way he was with you for you or to protect us from what you are. Now I’m thinkin’ it’s that last one.”